


Somebody’s Goodnight Kiss

by Jennifer-Oksana (JenniferOksana)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Kissing, Movie: Fight The Future, Romance, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 07:17:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5904688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenniferOksana/pseuds/Jennifer-Oksana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder and Scully have to deal with the aftermath of the events of Fight the Future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somebody’s Goodnight Kiss

“If I quit, they win.”

Yeah. But at this point, do I really care who wins? Cheap bastards. What did I get out of this whole adventure? A glimpse of the mothership while my partner shivered next to me, alive on the virtue of adrenaline and divine intervention. Frostbite and cold balls. All for the quick view that was like a chick flashing at Mardi Gras: exciting as hell, but blurred into incoherence and incomprehension by the occasion.

Her hand slips around mine, and I looked at that beauty, which, marred, is only more divine. Those bruised and broken veins in her face and hands, the signs of the death that stopped by and passed over us once again.

Flashback to the ice. The shock and adrenaline gave out on me and I slipped into that sweet oblivion. I thought I would die on the ice for the second time in my life. I thought it would be fitting for this Captain Ahab to die on the barren ice, triumphant in his paranoid belief but to no useful purpose. Of course, I would take my beloved with me, her pale and perfect (and dying) form my guardian as I died and went to hell, her soul perhaps shedding a few crystal tears for me as she went to heaven.

Oblivion. The void. That emptiness that had always threatened to claim me as its own finally had me. And I was glad of this death.

“Mulder,” her voice calls to me, breaking the reverie of death and the reverie of memory. “You’re quiet.”

“Where do you get so much strength?” I ask her. “How can you have the energy to care any more?”

Her eyes leap up to mine, and in those blue orbs I see the future. It’s a tragedy written in water, flowing and changing with the moment, but always ending the same. The future aches and snaps at me, even if my self-oracle is right and somehow, despite Gibson and Diana and a thousand other impossible obstacles, we’ll get the X-Files back again. The future is very long and endlessly looping before me.

“I need purpose, Mulder,” she says. We’re walking for the sun together. Summer in DC is killer, but after the ice, the heat has abated a bit for me. I can handle it. “I need there to be a reason to keep going. If that means caring, so be it.”

“Why do you want to keep going?” I ask. “You wanted to stop. In the hallway, you were gone. What were you going to do, before that bee stung you?”

Her eyes flicker up at me with surprise and maybe a little wry humor. “I was gonna kiss you, Mulder. What do you think?”

“Were you gonna kiss me or was I going to kiss you?” I ask. I remember the hallway very well. Her eyes ringed with tears, and a flicker that I swore was desire. My very own corner of beauty in the world, and she was gone. So long, Mulder. I’m leaving and that’s that. I couldn’t let it go.

“You were gonna kiss me,” she murmurs. “But I was gonna kiss you right back at the same time.”

My mind slips away from that and to the ice. Always the ice. In her arms. Freezing to death. We were going to die together. I thought the notion was sort of romantic as my groggy consciousness was forced up from my initial faint. Little Scully couldn’t pull me too far, no matter how much adrenaline was pumping through her veins. She was sick, dying even. She would willingly bear my burden, but she literally could not.

Her whispered voice haunts me even now. Her words on the ice resonate in my mind.

“Mulder, you have to come back to me,” she whispered. “Mulder, I can’t do this alone. Mulder–”

Her endless chanting of my name forced that sweet endless oblivion away. My eyes fluttered open, my feet moved. Come back to her. I had no choice. To leave her alone would be like her leaving me alone: unthinkable.

“Scully,” I managed to say.

“How do we get outta here?” she whispered. “We can’t stay.”

“Sno-Cat,” I whispered. “Come on.”

We trudged through the snow together, hoping for some sort of solace and relief from the cold.

“I wish–” she murmured.

“What?” I asked, thoughts dancing across my head like ‘I wish I’d never met you, Mulder’ with disturbing frequency.

“I wish we had some of my mom’s chicken soup,” she whispered. “I’m so cold.”

“Come on. Keep moving. We’ll be okay.”

These slices of the recent past jar terribly with the summer heat and buzz around us. She looks at me, troubled and uneasy suddenly.

“Do you regret it?” she asks, bringing me back to the present. She means the kiss of course. What am I supposed to say to that? It wasn’t my fault the bee stung her at that moment, but Fate and the stars seem to be against us. Let me put it this way: Romeo and Juliet were star-crossed lovers. Scully and I are star-twisted-into-a-Gordian-knot lovers.

“No, but don’t you ever wonder what Fate has against the two of us together?” I ask bitterly. “Together happily, anyway.”

Her face grows set and silent. What is she remembering? Eddie van Blundht? Slipping into darkness with my arms around her? Her blue eyes truly are gems, you know. Staring into them is like staring into the Well of Bethlehem– one drink and you’ll never thirst again.

“So what does that mean?” she asks tensely. “Does that mean you want to live unhappily ever after? Like this? Going in an eternal ring around the roses?”

“We all fall down,” I tell her. “And the Smoking Man laughs on our graves.”

Her eyes narrow and go dark. “Then why try if that’s the vision you have?” she asks bitterly.

“Exactly,” I reply.

How did we make it out alive? I remember the Sno-Cat, vaguely, as though we were in a dream. I remember starting it, the heat, and I remember Scully–

I remember Scully’s eyes trying to stay open. “Sing?” she asked. “To stay awake?”

“I can’t sing,” I remember whispering. “I don’t know what to sing.”

“Anything,” she murmured. “Gotta try.”

“You pick a song,” I replied. “I’ll sing with you.”

She tried to smile, but she was too cold, too tired, and too dazed. “Okay,” she whispered. “But it’s silly.”

“What did we sing in the Sno-Cat?” I ask suddenly, grasping her wrist. “We sang something.”

Her eyes flicker up at me. “You remember that? I remember I thought you were gone. Delirious. I was pretty delirious at the time, too, but I started singing, too.”

I’m trying to remember. I’m trying to piece together all the slivers and shards that were once Fox Mulder and Dana Scully and put them together so that everything works out.

“Sing it, girl,” I tease now. I teased then, too. Time is blurring into one static and frozen moment. Scully and I, together in that one moment that loops over and over again. My past, my present, and my future.

“All right,” she demurs. She smiles at me.

“It was a teenaged wedding and the old folks wished ’em well,” she sings. Sang. “You could see that Pierre did truly love the mademoiselle– And now the young monsieur and madame have rung the chapel bell– c’est la vie, said the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell.”

I remember. Just a little. Singing along faintly– “C’est la vie, said the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell.”

We were going to freeze to death. It was inevitable. And then we were rescued. You never can tell, can you? I thought I was gonna be a freezy pop. But instead, I’m back at square one with the best looking almost- popsicle on earth.

“Do you remember, Mulder?” she asks. We’ve walked a long way, and we’re standing in the shadow of the Capitol. I look down at her. In her eyes are all the mysteries.

I understand why she will still fight. I understand why we’ll stay together, despite the tragedy that looms on the horizon.

“I remember,” I murmur.

“What do you remember?” she asks.

“I couldn’t leave you alone. And you weren’t going to give up,” I say. “So I had to keep going, too. You saved me. You saved us both.”

I want to kiss her, God damn it. I want to believe Fate is not inevitable. I want to see that sparkle of incredulity and desire cross her eyes, I want the desire I saw.

She looks at me. “You’re not saying everything, are you?” she asks. “It’s okay. I respect that.”

To hell with restraint and the difficult questions. I kiss her. Not a slow lean-in, checking and crosschecking if this is okay. There’s no time for that. Not for us.

Our lips meet. The kiss is slow, long. My pulse speeds up. Her perfume is vanilla and spicy. She’s a good kisser. I’m not so bad myself, despite the length of time it’s been.

Our kiss is not about urgent desire. It’s not a desperate gesture of the moment. She pulls lightly on my lower lips. It’s warmth, trying to reach that part of myself that was frozen and hasn’t thawed upon return to Washington. We’re trying to avoid the shadows of tragedy that hover like guardian angels at the fringes of our shared life.

She pulls away finally, the light in those eyes manna and cold water. I care who wins. I want it to be us. I don’t want that tragic future. We may all end up dead in the end, but it’s what happens before that makes death tragic or merely finis.

“Night, Mulder,” she says.

“I love you,” I say recklessly. “I always will.”

“I know,” she replies. “I love you too. Good night.”

“Good night,” I said, reaching out and squeezing her hand fondly. She smiles at me, squeezes back, and leaves. A smile crosses my face, too.

You never can tell, after all. The two of us, who knows? We might be able to beat the bastards and save the day in the end. At least, at the very least and that’s an awful lot in my book, we have each other.

Love, a goodnight kiss, and hope. For tonight, that’s enough to make me happy. I get in the next cab and head home. I swelter in my suit in the heat. But I’m not cold anymore. Like the last time I thought I would die on the ice, I have found a reason to keep looking.


End file.
